At least a couple of times a week, someone asks me why they would use our FBA Shipping app when Shopify already has a built-in Fulfillment by Amazon integration. And then I turn into a huge dork who gets super excited about explaining the multitude of ways that our app is better.

What Is This FBA Shipping Integration?

First of all, what does all this stuff mean? Basically, you can have your products stored at Amazon and list those products on your Shopify store. Then, if you have this integration setup, customers can order the products from your Shopify store and Amazon will fulfill the order for you.

So you don’t have to store all that inventory, you don’t have to deal with packing and shipping orders every day, AND Amazon only charges you about half the fulfillment fees they would charge if the customer ordered your products directly from Amazon. Awesome, right?

How Does This All Work?

It all comes down to the shipping rates. With both our FBA Shipping app and Shopify’s built-in integration, you have to setup shipping rates that get linked to Amazon. So when your customer checks out, they choose one of those linked rates and then the order info gets sent to Amazon.

But here’s the HUGE difference between us and Shopify. Our app uses dynamic, real-time rates that come directly from Amazon. So the customer selects whatever products they want and enters their shipping address during checkout. We send that info to Amazon and say, “How much will you charge to ship these products to this location?” Amazon says, “Here is exactly what we will charge for Standard Shipping, Expedited Shipping, etc.” We then present those rates to the customer, who happily completes their order. And this all happens in 1-2 seconds.

With Shopify’s integration, you have to setup fixed shipping rates. If you want to be sure that your shipping costs are 100% covered, you would need to set up thousands of rates to cover all the possible product combinations, shipping locations, Amazon warehouse locations, etc. Totally insane. And if you choose instead to just setup one flat rate, some customers might think it’s too high and abandon checkout. Other times, that rate might be too low and you’ll end up losing money. No bueno.

What Else Is Awesome About FBA Shipping?

Have you ever tried to setup Shopify’s integration? It’s a nightmare. Super difficult, not user-friendly at all. The FBA Shipping app is the opposite of that. Quick and painless.

We also pull tracking info and order updates from Amazon and send them to your customers automatically. If you have these emails turned on in your Shopify notification settings, we’ll pull the data from Amazon, insert it into your beautifully designed and custom branded emails, then send them directly to your customers. You don’t have to lift a finger.

And we let you customize the shipping rates. You can actually tell the app to charge a dollar amount or percentage rate more or less than what Amazon charges if you want. For example, you can add $1 or 10% (or whatever amount you want) to every shipping charge. More money in your pocket!

And AND you can offer free shipping to your customers through the app. You can make it free for every order or set a dollar amount, like free shipping for orders over $50.

Are You Done Dorking Out Over This?

No! A couple more awesome things about the app:

+ The customer has no idea the items are being fulfilled by Amazon. When they checkout in your store, they never leave your store.
+ You can cancel orders on either Amazon or Shopify and the order will be canceled on all channels. With Shopify’s integration, you have to cancel the order on both channels yourself.
+ Our app works with FBA accounts based throughout North America and most of Europe. Shopify’s integration only works with US accounts.
+ You don’t have to do anything! The app does all this stuff automatically.

Conclusion

ByteStand’s FBA Shipping app is the greatest thing in the history of the universe (maybe a little exaggeration there). You can use it to get your Shopify orders automatically fulfilled by Amazon, passing on Amazon’s shipping fees to your customer (or not, your choice). The customer gets tracking info and everything, never realizing their order has anything to do with Amazon until they get the Amazon box in the mail. And you never have to lift a finger. Get the FBA Shipping app from the Shopify app store here.